Reliable social security statistics are an important precondition for good governance and policy making. However, in many countries, the quantitative knowledge base on social security is incomplete and often does not follow international statistical standards. The overarching objective of the ILO Social Security Inquiry is to assist countries in improving their quantitative knowledge base on social security.

The objective of the ILO Social Security Inquiry (SSI) is to collect, store and disseminate comparable statistical data on social security worldwide. This includes expenditure and receipts of social protection schemes as well as data on protected persons, recipients of social benefits and benefit amounts. The rationale of the inquiry is to address the lack of (comparable) social security statistics outside the OECD world. In this respect, the inquiry adopts a systematic approach compatible with existing statistical frameworks such as the European System of Integrated Social Protection Statistics (ESSPROS) and the OECD (SOCX Social Expenditure Database).

The ILO Social Security Inquiry identifies statistical information on social security, including employment-related social security schemes, public health, welfare and anti-poverty programmes and non-public schemes of different types transferring goods, services or cash to poor and vulnerable households.

The core of the information in the ILO social security inquiry database can be found in the "Scheme information" section with a direct access to the inventory of schemes and for each, data reported for the overall scheme and for each of the benefits provided.

On this basis, a set a national agregate indicators are calculated for each countries. There are in theory more than 50 indicators available (on expenditure and coverage). In practice, this number depends on data availability and on the current state in the process of data collection for a given country. These indicators can be found in the the "Indicators" section.

How to? & More about?

How to?

As a start, select a country from the list of available countriesTwo main entry points are available by country

Individual scheme data & related information (Scheme information)

Agregate indicators for a given country or for a set of countries (Indicators)